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45 Crime & Delinquency 3 (1999)

handle is hein.journals/cadq45 and id is 1 raw text is: Reconsidering Restorative Justice: The Corruption of Benevolence Revisited? Sharon Levrant Francis T. Cullen Betsy Fulton John F. Wozniak Restorative justice has emerged as an increasingly popular correctional paradigm that is drawing support not only from conservatives but also from liberals. Although this approach has value, its ready embrace as a progressive reform ispotentiallyproblematic in two respects. First, the risk exists that restorative justice programs will be corrupted to serve nonprogressive goals and thus do more harm than good. Second, there is little rea- son to anticipate that restorative justice programs will have a meaningful effect on offender recidivism. Thus, restorative justice should be viewed and implemented with caution. Three decades have passed since the rehabilitative agenda was pushed aside for crime control policies rooted in a get tough philosophy. This ori- entation has led to harsh forms of punishment, including a dramatic increase in incarceration, the passage of three strikes and you're out laws, the rein- statement of the death penalty, and a return to chain gangs. Even community-based sanctions are unabashedly fierce, emphasizing rigorous surveillance and the enforcement of increasingly stringent conditions of supervision (Clear and Hardyman 1990, p. 46). Clear (1994, p. 3) character- izes this growth in the levels of punishment as a penal harm movement jus- tified by both a retributive philosophy of inflicting deserved pain on offend- ers and the utilitarian arguments of deterrence and incapacitation. It is tempting to portray the penal harm movement as having achieved complete hegemony over correctional policies. To be sure, it is a powerful way of thinking with which few policy makers publicly take issue. Still, penal harm ideology has undermined but not stamped out alternative perspectives. SHARON LEVRANT: Ph.D. Student, University of Cincinnati. FRANCIS T. CULLEN: Dis- tinguished Research Professor of Criminal Justice, University of Cincinnati. BETSY FULTON: Ph.D. Student, University of Cincinnati. JOHN F. WOZNIAK: Associate Professor of Sociol- ogy, Western Illinois University. CRIME & DELINQUENCY, Vol. 45 No. 1, January 1999 3-27 @ 1999 Sage Publications, Inc. 3 from the SAGE Social Science Collections. All Rights Reserved.

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